YEREVAN, March 30. /TASS/. Armenia and Russia should build pragmatic relations based on a roadmap, Armenian President Armen Sarkissian said in an interview with the newspaper Aravot on Tuesday.
"We lived in one state for about 200 years, first in the Russian Empire and then in the Soviet Union … However, in developing relations between the two countries, we should push aside this feeling to form the agenda of our relations through a very cold, pragmatic and comprehensive analysis, through a dialogue. In other words, we should have a roadmap of our relations with Russia based on mutual interests," Sarkissian noted.
As the Armenian president stressed, it is necessary to have "a pragmatic agenda consisting of two basic components: trust between partners and predictability. "We should not avoid strategic, long-term partnership with Russia because this is natural for Armenia and many of our partners in the West understand this well," Sarkissian said.
As the Armenian president noted, "there is no contradiction in preserving "deep and warm relations with the West" while having "special relations with Russia.".